With the G20 growing in stature [5] after its inaugural leaders' summit in 2008 , its leaders announced on 25 September 2009 that the group would replace the G8 as the main economic council of wealthy nations. [6] Since its inception, the G20's membership policies have been criticized by numerous intellectuals, [7] [30] and its summits have been a focus for major protests by left-wing groups and anarchists .

The G20 was foreshadowed at the Cologne Summit of the G7 in June 1999, and formally established at the G7 Finance Ministers' meeting on 26 September 1999 with an inaugural meeting on 15–16 December 1999 in Berlin. Canadian finance minister Paul Martin was chosen as the first chairman and German finance minister Hans Eichel hosted the inaugural meeting. [10]

Geithner and Koch-Weser went down the list of countries saying, Canada in, Portugal out, South Africa in, Nigeria and Egypt out, and so on; they sent their list to the other G7 finance ministries; and the invitations to the first meeting went out.

Early topics

The G20's primary focus has been governance of the global economy . Summit themes have varied from year to year. The theme of the 2006 G20 ministerial meeting was "Building and Sustaining Prosperity". The issues discussed included domestic reforms to achieve "sustained growth", global energy and resource commodity markets, reform of the World Bank and IMF, and the impact of demographic changes due to an aging world population.

In 2007, South Africa hosted the secretariat with Trevor A. Manuel , South African Minister of Finance as chairperson of the G20.

In 2008, Guido Mantega , Brazil's Minister of Finance, was the G20 chairperson and proposed dialogue on competition in financial markets, clean energy , economic development and fiscal elements of growth and development.

On 11 October 2008 after a meeting of G7 finance ministers, US President George W. Bush stated that the next meeting of the G20 would be important in finding solutions to the burgeoning economic crisis of 2008 .

Summits

The G20 Summit of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, who prepare the leaders' summit and implement their decisions, was created as a response both to the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and to a growing recognition that key emerging countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance. Additionally, the G20 Summits of heads of state or government were held.

Since 2011, when France chaired and hosted the G20, the summits have been held only once a year. [77] The 2016 summit was held in China , [20] and 2017 summit was held in Hamburg , Germany .

A number of other ministerial-level G20 meetings have been held since 2010. Agriculture ministerial meetings were conducted in 2011 and 2012; meetings of foreign ministers were held in 2012 and 2013; trade ministers met in 2012 and 2014, and employment ministerial meetings have taken place annually since 2010. [22]

In March 2014, the Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop , as host of the 2014 G20 summit in Brisbane , proposed to ban Russia from the summit over its role in the 2014 Crimean crisis . [23] The BRICS foreign ministers subsequently reminded Bishop that "the custodianship of the G20 belongs to all Member States equally and no one Member State can unilaterally determine its nature and character." [24]

List of summits

Chair rotation

To decide which member nation gets to chair the G20 leaders' meeting for a given year, all 19 sovereign nations are assigned to one of five different groupings. Each group holds a maximum of four nations. This system has been in place since 2010, when South Korea, which is in Group 5, held the G20 chair. The table below lists the nations' groupings: [26]

Organisation

The G20 operates without a permanent secretariat or staff. The group's chair rotates annually among the members and is selected from a different regional grouping of countries. The chair is part of a revolving three-member management group of past, present and future chairs, referred to as the " Troika ". The incumbent chair establishes a temporary secretariat for the duration of its term, which coordinates the group's work and organizes its meetings. The role of the Troika is to ensure continuity in the G20's work and management across host years. The current chair of the G20 is Germany, which hosted the 2017 Summit in Hamburg .

List of members

As of 2017 there are 20 members of the group. These include, at the leaders' summits, the leaders of 19 countries and of the European Union, and, at the ministerial-level meetings, the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries and of the European Union.

The G20's membership does not reflect exactly the 19 largest national economies of the world in any given year. The organization states: [2]

In a forum such as the G20, it is particularly important for the number of countries involved to be restricted and fixed to ensure the effectiveness and continuity of its activity. There are no formal criteria for G20 membership and the composition of the group has remained unchanged since it was established. In view of the objectives of the G20, it was considered important that countries and regions of systemic significance for the international financial system be included. Aspects such as geographical balance and population representation also played a major part.

Spain , being the 14th largest economy in the world and 5th in the European Union in terms of nominal GDP, has been a "permanent guest" of the organization, and the Spanish government's policy is to not request official membership. [36] [37] A Spanish delegation has been invited to, and has attended, every G20 heads of state summit since the G20's inception.

Role of Asian countries

A 2011 report released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) predicted that large Asian economies such as China and India would play a more important role in global economic governance in the future. The report claimed that the rise of emerging market economies heralded a new world order, in which the G20 would become the global economic steering committee. [38] The ADB furthermore noted that Asian countries had led the global recovery following the late-2000s recession . It predicted that the region would have a greater presence on the global stage, shaping the G20's agenda for balanced and sustainable growth through strengthening intraregional trade and stimulating domestic demand. [38]

G20 Agenda

Financial focus

The initial G20 agenda, as conceived by US, Canadian and German policy makers, was very much focused on the sustainability of sovereign debt and global financial stability, in an inclusive format that would bring in the largest developing economies as equal partners. During a summit in November 2008, the leaders of the group pledged to contribute trillions to international finance organizations, including the World Bank and IMF, mainly for reestablishing the global financial system. [89]

Interrelated themes

Wolfgang Schäuble , German Federal Minister of Finance , has insisted on the interconnected nature of the issues facing G20 nations, be they purely financial or developmental, and the need to reach effective, cross-cutting policy measures: "Globalization has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, but there is also a growing rise in frustration in some quarters […] development, [national] security and migration are all interlinked" [91]

Criticisms

Exclusivity of membership

Although the G20 has stated that the group "economic weight and broad membership gives it a high degree of legitimacy and influence over the management of the global economy and financial system," [6] its legitimacy has been challenged. A 2011 report for the Danish Institute for International Studies , criticised the G20's exclusivity, highlighting in particular its under-representation of the African continent and the G20's practice of inviting observers from non-member states as a mere "concession at the margins", which does not grant the organisation representational legitimacy. [6] With respect to the membership issue, U.S. President Barack Obama noted the difficulty of pleasing everyone: "everybody wants the smallest possible group that includes them. So, if they're the 21st largest nation in the world, they want the G21, and think it's highly unfair if they have been cut out." [6] Others stated in 2011 that the exclusivity is not an insurmountable problem, and proposed mechanisms by which it could become more inclusive.

Norwegian perspective

In a 2010 interview with Der Spiegel , the Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre called the G20 "one of the greatest setbacks since World War II." [7] Although Norway is a major developed economy and the seventh-largest contributor to UN international development programs, [44] it is not a member of the EU, and thus is not represented in the G20 even indirectly. [7] Norway, like the other 173 nations not among the G-20, has little or no voice within the group. Støre characterized the G20 as a "self-appointed group", arguing that it undermines the legitimacy of international organizations set up in the aftermath of World War II, such as the IMF, World Bank and United Nations:

The G20 is a self-appointed group. Its composition is determined by the major countries and powers. It may be more representative than the G7 or the G8, in which only the richest countries are represented, but it is still arbitrary. We no longer live in the 19th century, a time when the major powers met and redrew the map of the world. No one needs a new Congress of Vienna . [7]

Spanish position on membership

As previously stated, the Spanish government's policy is to not request official membership. Despite being hit hard by the economic crisis after 2008, Spain is still the world's fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP (the 5th in the European Union) and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity , clearly exceeding the numbers of several current members of the G20 such as Argentina or South Africa. In addition, since the 1990s several Spanish companies have gained multinational status, often expanding their activities in culturally close Latin America, where Spain is the second biggest foreign investor after the United States and keeps an important influence. These facts have reinforced the idea that Spain should seek permanent membership of the G20. On the other hand, Spain, which is a European country, is not a representation of Latin America, therefore some observers think another country from South America should be included as well as Argentina.

Polish aspirations

Contrary to Spain, the Polish government has repeatedly asked to join the G20. During a 2010 meeting with foreign diplomats, former Polish president Lech Kaczyński said:

Polish economy is according to our data an 18th world economy. The place of my country is among the members of the G20. This is a very simple postulate: firstly – it results from the size of Polish economy , secondly – it results from the fact that Poland is the biggest country in its region and the biggest country that has experienced a certain story. That story is a political and economic transformation. [6]

(Note: as of 2016/2017, the Polish economy is not in the top 20 nominally or by PPP criteria.)

Before the 2009 G20 London summit , the Polish government expressed an interest in joining with Spain and the Netherlands and condemned an "organisational mess" in which a few European leaders speak in the name of all the EU without legitimate authorisation in cases which belong to the European Commission .

In 2012 Forbes wrote that swapping Argentina for Poland should be considered, claiming that the Polish economy was headed toward a leadership role in Europe and its membership would be more legitimate. [6] Similar opinions have been later expressed by American magazine Foreign Policy , Wall Street Journal and by Mamta Murthi from the World Bank . [6] [49] In 2014 consulting company Ernst & Young published its report about optimal members for G20. After analyzing trade, institutional and investment links Poland was included as one of the optimal members. [50]

Global Governance Group (3G) response

In June 2010, Singapore's representative to the United Nations warned the G20 that its decisions would affect "all countries, big and small", and asserted that prominent non-G20 members should be included in financial reform discussions. [52] Singapore thereafter took a leading role in organizing the Global Governance Group (3G), an informal grouping of 30 non-G20 countries (including several microstates and many Third World countries) with the aim of collectively channelling their views into the G20 process more effectively. [53] Singapore's chairing of the 3G was cited as a rationale for inviting Singapore to the November 2010 G20 summit in South Korea, as well as the 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and the recently concluded 2017 summits. [55]

Foreign Policy critiques

The American magazine Foreign Policy has published articles condemning the G20, in terms of its principal function as an alternative to the supposedly exclusive G8. It questions the actions of some of the G20 members, and advances the notion that some nations should not have membership in the first place. Furthermore, with the effects of the Great Recession still ongoing, the magazine has criticized the G20's efforts to implement reforms of the world's financial institutions, branding such efforts as failed. [96]

Wider concerns

The G20's prominent membership gives it a strong input on global policy despite lacking any formal ability to enforce rules. There are disputes over the legitimacy of the G20, [16] and criticisms of its organisation and the efficacy of its declarations. [17]

The G20's transparency and accountability have been questioned by critics, who call attention to the absence of a formal charter and the fact that the most important G20 meetings are closed-door. [57] In 2001, the economist Frances Stewart proposed an Economic Security Council within the United Nations as an alternative to the G20. In such a council, members would be elected by the General Assembly based on their importance to the world economy, and the contribution they are willing to provide to world economic development. [58]

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